“COVID-19 is a novel virus, so we don’t know which vaccine strategy will work best. We need to try everything we have," said Dr. Carolina Ilkow, scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa.
Drs. Carolina Ilkow, John Bell and colleagues are harnessing their expertise in making oncolytic (cancer-fighting) viruses to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, in partnership with scientists and clinicians in Canada and around the world. One of the key things they’ve learned is that the best cancer-killing viruses also stimulate the body’s own immune system – in effect, training the immune cells to recognize and help attack the cancer cells.
They have developed a number of viruses that are very good at boosting the immune system and have already been tested safely in people. These viruses will be reengineered by splicing in key genes from the COVID-19 virus to create several candidate vaccines, which would train the body to mount an immune response against COVID-19. They expect this live vaccine will be particularly important for health care workers and vulnerable populations, including people with cancer. Once the vaccine is created, large quantities can be made in The Ottawa Hospital’s Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre.
“We know that people with cancer who get COVID-19 are much more likely to get severely ill, so we think that working on a vaccine is the best thing we can do right now to help cancer patients,” said Dr. John Bell, senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.
- Research team at The Ottawa Hospital/uOttawa: John Bell, Carolina Ilkow, Jonathan Angel, Rebecca Auer, Taha Azad, Stephen Boulton, Bill Cameron, Mathieu Crupi, Jean-Simon Diallo, Michael Jamieson, Nikolas Martin, Joanna Poutou, Ragunath Singaravelu
- External collaborators: Douglas Mahoney and Craig Jenne (University of Calgary), Réjean Lapointe and Jean-Francois Cailhier (University of Montreal), Rudolf Bohm and Kasi Russell-Lodrigue (Tulane University), Zhou Xing and Brian Lichty (McMaster University)
- Core Resources at The Ottawa Hospital: Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre
- Funders: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Fast Grants / Thistledown Foundation, The Ottawa Hospital Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund
- Learn more: Cancer-killing viruses provide inspiration for COVID-19 vaccine - Ottawa researchers awarded $250,000 from Fast Grants in partnership with the Thistledown Foundation
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Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
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